31 Notes from May

The first week of shelter in place, my mind felt swollen with time

I look up from the latest coronavirus article on Facebook, toward the window, as a siren screams in the distance. It’s only on TV

When a certain president was elected, I found comfort in reading about the Black Plague 

About a week into the quarantine, my five-year-old daughter started to say she was scared of monsters

Chicago’s “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” A present sent from 1970 by a higher life form with a sense of humor

Adaptable as finches, we embrace/ the routines of our grandmothers:/baking bread, writing letters

I come from a long line of worriers, and I am not about to give up worrying now

Last December in Glenville, before the quarantine, shelves inside the New East Side Market, which had opened in May, were already empty

Covid-19 is like a red stain, showing the rotten spots in our social and economic structures

There’s no TV, no broadcast news except the governor’s measured briefings, in this rented condo on Lake Erie where I’m sheltering, where all the chairs face north

Is that what we will remember?      a cold wet spring --/ everything     waiting ...

I’m a little embarrassed to say that ever since I had cancer my fondest fantasy has been of me on my death bed with my sons sitting near me, holding my hand, maybe reading to me

In one sense, fatalism is liberating

Hi from the middle of nowhere

Despite the herculean efforts of Netflix, Saturday has become the cruelest night

It never ended, this hope that someone would send something, whether I bought it or exchanged a letter for it

The joy of a pandemic puppy, though, is in the constant reminder that there are still good things, and they will persist

Covid came, Covid saw, and Covid kicked my ass

I am grateful to the four pileated woodpeckers who showed up together at the bird feeders, the black snake who coiled its length on a snag’s toadstool ledge, and one bald eagle following the Grand River 

I’m thinking about my daughter Susan’s birthday, which is today, which I will miss, as I missed her sister’s in April

I wonder if I know any parents whose fears for themselves this spring, despite age and health factors, outweigh their fears for their children

When the streets grow barren,/ most pick up their cross and guard/ what they call home

The limits imposed on us by the pandemic have helped me come to this realization, that all I have to work with is this day, my little part of the world, myself

I return to my car panting in anxiety, drive gratefully home, and remove my mask to gulp the air in my house, returning my heart to a somewhat normal pace

This spring, before coronavirus arrived at my suburban Philadelphia university, I was teaching my favorite course: “Life, Death, and Disease”

I wrote “I miss my friends.” I wrote “I miss swimming.” I wrote “I can’t stand this anymore”

In the midst of this pandemic, conspiracy theories have spread faster than the disease

I feel that I will look back on this cold spring, this season of forced isolation and uncertainty, as a magic time

I let the rabbit down into the hole and covered it with earth, sent it to its long rest

This is the moment in history that we occupy, and children know it. They will be the ones who write the story of Covid-19 years and years from now

“You can’t see the virus,” I tell Gus. “It’s very, very tiny.” He turns around. The cat continues his lookout for trespassing cardinals. “It’s a big gray ball,” Gus informs me. “It has little horns like Shrek”

We’ve taken a sentence or two or some lines from each blog post in May to create a quilt, a cento, a mini-collage, a fringe of whose story is this? We hope it’s ours, in the same way that holding hands can help (although we can’t do that now).